This page contains unmarked spoilers for the plot of Subnautica.
Subnautica: Return of the Ancients is a Game Mod for Subnautica. It alters the game's story to bring more focus to the Precursors/Architects and the creatures they researched (particularly that one down in the Lost River), while also implementing gameplay content in the originally-blank Crater Edge.In an Alternate Continuity of Ryley Robinson's adventures in the Crater, the Architects made significantly more progress in their foothold on Planet 4546B before the Disease Research Facility disaster. Yet it still ends in ruin, and Ryley must now explore these new ruins on top of everything else he had to contend with in canon.
Unfortunately, just as the Architects flourished in this new timeline, so too did the fauna of the Crater. And as Ryley soon learns, the worst of the Architects' research subjects have returned to haunt the depths of the ocean...
The mod is notable for enlisting the assistance of Simon Chylinski, the previous sound designer for Subnautica prior to his termination from Unknown Worlds Entertainment. It is currently unavailable to the public, although several YouTubers have access to closed beta builds with free reign to do as they please (record, criticize, speculate, etc.) in public to serve as the main way of telling certain parts of the mod's story before its release.
Tropes:
- Adaptation Expansion: A few extra skeletons of the Leviathans are scattered across the map to help illustrate the Crater's ecology, and the mod's increased focus on the Architects gives the player a vast selection of their technology and infrastructure to use in base-building and toolmaking. It also alters the Sunbeam's crash sequence to involve the Gargantuan Leviathan and extend Avery Quinn's dialogue, hinting at an extra story beat involving the ship's life pods (though whether or not they'll actually live and/or provide meaningful insight is yet to be revealed.)
- Alternate Continuity: What If?... the Architects survived on the planet much longer than in the original game?
- Awakening the Sleeping Giant: Much of the mod's Alternate Continuity focuses on the explosion of the Aurora reawakening the Gargantuan Leviathan.
- Border Patrol: Subverted; the adult Gargantuan Leviathan takes over the role of the Ghost Leviathans in enforcing this trope out on the Crater Edge, but there are numerous hints that something else is out there that demands Ryley's attention and which the Leviathan is now simply in the way of unlike in canon.
- Butterfly of Doom: The game's timeline diverges in this mod through the extended survival of the Architects, as well as the survival of the Gargantuan Leviathan species despite its function initially starting as Border Patrol and extra monsters on the edge of the world to put up with. This is made very apparent if you try to play the vanilla story, as its ending is impossible to achieve in Return of the Ancients due to the Gargantuan Leviathan's involvement. It will crush the Neptune if any attempt is made to launch it after disabling the Quarantine Enforcement Platform.
- But Thou Must!: The vanilla ending is altered into a Non-Standard Game Over where the adult Gargantuan Leviathan kills you in the Neptune, making the Continuity Reboot story mandatory.
- In Spite of a Nail: The Leviathans still prove to be the downfall of the Architects' foothold on the planet. Aside from the Disease Research Facility disaster from canon, a derelict machine can be found crashed into the world edge that constantly calls for help that will never come, and there's only one thing out there that could actually bring down any submersible of its size...
- Kaiju: The adult Gargantuan Leviathan is every bit as massive as the PDA entry suggests, being over a kilometre long and being able to eat the Neptune whole.
- Klingon Promotion: Gameplay-wise, the adult Ghost Leviathans have been murdered and their roles in the game's balance are taken over by the juvenile Gargantuan Leviathans and the adult.
- Kraken and Leviathan: The Gargantuan Leviathan lives up to the metrics recorded by the PDA's examination of its ancestor's fossil. Baby leviathans are about as wide as Ampeels and several times longer than them. Juveniles are larger than the Sea Dragon Leviathan. And the adult in the void puts everything in the Crater to shame and is large enough to swallow the Neptune whole.
- Sonic Scream: The adult Gargantuan Leviathan's roar is so powerful it will knock out electronics and stun the player if either is too close to it but not within eating distance.
- Violation of Common Sense: The Crater Edge is not meant to be a playable space, as either the Ghost Leviathans will crush you to death or the adult Gargantuan Leviathan will eat you whole. The mod's story is demonstrated in promotional material and unfinished content in the beta builds to require you to go there and face the adult head-on.
- The Worf Effect:
- An Architect drone the size of a Ghost Leviathan is docked in the Quarantine Enforcement Platform as an early illustrator of their increased presence and former power in the new timeline. You eventually find a distress signal from a second that tried to escape a Gargantuan Leviathan and crashed into the Crater Edge, broadcasting an SOS into the void.
- There are heavy implications that the Ghost Leviathan skeletons scattered across the world's edges are previous victims of the Gargantuan Leviathans.
